The present invention relates to a method and a system having a help facility for use in processing information and, more particularly, to a method and a system adapted to control help information in implementing the help facility for use with integrated software comprising a plurality of application programs.
A majority of today's information processing systems are equipped with what is known as a help facility. Using that facility, an operator of such a system, when at a loss as to how to handle it, may be given pertinent instructions for proceeding with the ongoing process.
An example of conventional help facilities for use with information processing systems is found in Laid-open Patent No. 62-179016. In this example, when an operator is not sure how to operate the information processing system he is using, he may hit a specific key on the keyboard attached. The keystroke causes a display unit of the system to indicate what is called help information, i.e., a body of information about the correct operating procedures corresponding to the immediately preceding message that was output by the ongoing program of the system.
The above-described example also includes means for providing integrated software comprising at least two application programs with an independent help facility corresponding to each of these programs.
The conventional technology referred to above involves the following problem. The help information available to the operator at a given point in time is only that corresponding to the immediately preceding message. That is, if a help request is made at a certain point in time, it is impossible to provide help information reflecting more detailed status of the application programs involved.
The fact that integrated software comprised of at least two application programs has help facilities for each of the application programs inevitably complicates the functions of these programs. Furthermore, the means for implementing such help facilities overlap in varying degrees between application programs. This results in a bloated size of the integrated software as a whole.
In addition, an independent help facility for each of the application programs constituting integrated software makes it impossible to reference help information keyed to any application program other than the currently executing one.
It is thus apparent that the problem with conventional methods for implementing help facility for application programs is threefold: (1) these methods tend to complicate the mechanism of the help facility; (2) the total size of integrated software must be increased; and (3) it is impossible to reference help information across different application programs.